Phase change memory technology: Where is it headed?

Flash has the restriction of being block addressable, increasing the minimum transfer to 4 KB and requiring the use of the operating system file stack, thereby adding a lot of CPU overhead. This has resulted in a search for an alternative solid-state offering, and several candidates have surfaced, including phase change memory technology. Phase change memory ( #PCM ) looks like it might be the most viable alternative to solid-state. This memory operates by changing the conductivity of a cell from low to high (the phase change). This can be achieved by applying a voltage to modify the cell state. This change is very rapid; in the ten nanoseconds range. Because it is much closer in speed to dynamic RAM (DRAM), phase change memory technology is ideal for both #NVDIMMs and #NVMExpress (NVMe) SSDs. #Intel and #Micron have both announced versions of #3DXPoint, a product reputed to be PCM-based. While this has seen some delays and performance issues, it looks to be faster than flash in its first generation, and perhaps much faster in its follow-on versions.
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